With a self-checkout terminal, a customer visiting a store performs registration processing for commodities that the customer is about to buy and settlement processing such as payment of a price on a self-service basis without the intervention of a store clerk. In the registration and settlement processing in the self-checkout terminal, the self-checkout terminal handles, in addition to normal commodities, commodities having age limit conditions (hereinafter referred to as limited commodities), which the customer cannot buy unless the customer reaches an age set in every country, such as alcohol beverages and cigarettes. For example, when the customer is about to purchase a limited commodity, for example, an attendant checks the age of the customer and, if the customer is at an age allowed to purchase the commodity as a result of the check, the self-checkout terminal performs registration processing for the limited commodity. If the customer is at an age not allowed to purchase the commodity, the self-checkout terminal cancels registration of the limited commodity.
In such a self check-out terminal, when a customer purchases a limited commodity, for example, the attendant checks the age of the customer. Therefore, the registration processing for the commodity can be carried forward only after the check.
As a related art of the self-checkout terminal of this type, for example, there is known a technique for determining whether a commodity is an age limited commodity for which an age condition for permitting sales is set and, when it is determined that the commodity is the age limited commodity, stopping commodity sales data processing being executed.
In the self-checkout terminal in the past, when the age of a customer about to purchase a limited commodity is checked, if the attendant is absent, the age of the customer cannot be checked and the registration processing for the commodity cannot be carried forward. Therefore, the customer is kept waiting and annoyed.
Under such circumstances, it is necessary to take measures for enabling smooth progress of registration processing when a customer purchases an age limited commodity and reducing time in which the customer is kept waiting.